Eager House restoration begins massive HemisFair Park overhaul

Update: Corrects the source of the $1 million to renovate the Eager House.

Baby steps. Actually, relative to what is envisioned for all of HemisFair Park, these steps are small even by baby measurements. But you have to start somewhere.

By the end of January, the complete restoration of the Eager House is scheduled to begin, so that HemisFair Park staff (currently, a handful of people) can eventually use the building for its office. The project is not just the restoration of the 1,575-square-foot building, but also the Carriage House and two restroom buildings behind it.

The HemisFair Park Area Redevelopment Corporation is scheduled to select a contractor — either Guido Brothers Construction Co. and J.C. Stoddard Construction — at its next meeting on Jan. 13.

According to an official-looking, undated site inventory of HemisFair Park, the Eager House was built in 1866 by a man named William Riddle as a wedding gift to his daughter Sarah, who married a man named Robert Eager, an artist from Halifax Nova Scotia. The summary does not say why Eager moved to San Antonio, or how the two met. During HemisFair ’68, it housed the Southern Baptist Exhibit.

The project also begins the process of transforming the adjacent playground into something called the “Children’s Square.” Texas-based landscape architecture firm TBG has been selected to execute this aspect of the project.

The restoration of the Eager House and its surrounding buildings, and landscaping, is slated to cost about $1 million, Andujar said, which is coming from roughly $2 million in park-related money from the 2007 bond.

According to an Express-News article in November, these first phases of HemisFair’s facelift would get a $30 million infusion from the 2012 bond program if it’s approved by voters in May.

Andujar and his team are still planning the planning process for the streets portion of the master plan. HPARC has chosen Berkeley, Calif.-based MIG, Inc. to redesign the portions of Chavez Boulevard and Alamo Street which frame the park, as well as resurrect Goliad and Water streets inside the park’s boundaries. The planning also will have to incorporate streetcar — a separate project by VIA Metropolitan Transit and the city — the route of which would approach HemisFair along Alamo from the north, cut through the park heading east to the Robert Thompson Transit Center at the Alamodome on the other side of I-37.

Andujar said there will be a public process, and that schematics of the newly-designed streets could be available by the end of April.

These are just the first steps in the revamping of HemisFair Park. The most significant aspects of the project call for major demolition of existing buildings, and major housing construction. But those are so far down the line, a number has not even been shared with the public, nor funding sources identified.